Letter: Critical thinking at a critical point

Comment

Rockford Register Star

Writer

Posted May. 21, 2014 at 2:35 PM

Posted May. 21, 2014 at 2:35 PM

In Michael Gerson’s column this past Tuesday, May 20, he lambasted school teachers that — in the name of developing critical thinking — have their students contemplate claims that the Holocaust was an exaggeration or fabrication.

Gerson rightfully pointed out that in so doing, they have too often trampled decency and truth.

He assigned this issue to the young in particular. But in so doing, he betrayed that the problem is far worse than he knows. Witness: He wrote, “The educational enterprise is not just a matter of teaching critical thinking — the cultivation of lawyers and Oxford debaters.”

Critical thinking is not, I must point out, relegated to lawyers and Oxford debaters. Everyone who Gerson was addressing needed to use critical thinking to access whether or not what he wrote was valid and/or worthy.

The problem of critical thinking is not as bad as Gerson says; it is far worse.